Improving People's Ability To Self Care

Highlights: Cotoco's toolkit approach resulted in a statistically significant increase in ability to self care, with about half of participants reporting they modified how they manage their condition as a result of using the toolkit.

With resources stretched, there has never been a more important time to help people with long term conditions to self care.

Cotoco has developed a technique of using technology to improve people’s ability to self care. Those people newly diagnosed with a condition would particularly be helped by this approach. However in one study where participants had been experienced in caring for themselves, about half of patients using the software based self care toolkit modified their management of their condition.

There is real potential to help improve people’s lives and to make significant resource savings at the same time through helping people self-manage while under the supervision of healthcare professionals. Cotoco are actively looking for partners to develop this lead.

The Study

Cotoco secured a grant from the Technology Strategy Board to carry out a feasibility study into whether the approach Cotoco developed to help people in organisations improve their performance could be applied to the self care challenge.

Of all possible long term conditions, the team chose dermatology as the prime area since 1 in 6 GP consultations are skin related. After careful consideration, Psoriasis was chosen as the subject for the study. It affects 2-3% of the UK population.

Cotoco worked with dermatology nursing expert Julie Van Onselen together with Fiona Cowdell and Professor Steve Ersser of Bournemouth University.

The study concept was to take users on a journey that begins with a better understanding of the condition, through practicalities of dealing with it to culminate in an interactive system to develop their own personalised action plan.

The study project was conducted over a three month period and comprising of design, production and field trial phases. The assessment strategy utilised Bournemouth University’s PeDeSI (Person-Centred Dermatology Self-Care Index) method (for formal assessment of people’s ability to self care) before and after utilising the toolkit.

A statistically significant improvement in the index was found (a 27.5% increase). What is more 45.3% of participants reported that they have modified how they manage their condition as a result of the toolkit.

Contact us if you would like to know more.